New ReactOS Newsletter

The ReactOS project has released a new newsletter. “The past few weeks have seen quite a lot of activity. At least six major blocker bugs were dealt with, ranging from the network issue to various bugs in the command line console.” On top of that: “Some people aren’t aware that ReactOS was one of several projects that received hardware to test on from One Laptop Per Child. Aleksey has been playing around with it, slowly coaxing ReactOS to boot.”

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“Perhaps ironically, after the VMware Display Driver started working, VMware released a new one that fails. Well, not so much as fails as reduces the resolution to 320×240.”

ReactOS is a nice effort, however when I decide to try an alternative OS (this, syllable, haiku or even solaris) I run into “hardware” problems. I acknowledge it won’t even need to fully support QEmu or VMware, still it’s a showstopper.

I think that predictor is trying to say that Microsoft could make legal problems to ReactOS team, as soon as they get close to the first production quality release. I don’t know if it makes sense or not.

It would be nice to have Win2k compatible that is supported and developed by someone….

Well as long as Microsoft has the 90%+ marketshare they have I don’t think they will do that for fear of anti-trust. If Microsoft’s marketshare starts getting lower I’d say you can bet they would give both Linux and ReactOS legal problems.

If so, please quote. If not, please don’t disturb the people putting real efforts in the project or just being interested.”

(Assuming you are responding to “legally dead,” a bit hard to determine around here).

Given the past problems with “audits”, “NT source code leaks”, plus all the FUD being spread by people claiming to be ReactOS *supporters*, plus the fact that Microsoft has raised the spectre of IP violations against Linux, it’s not at all surprising that people expect ReactOS to run into legal issues when v1.0 finally arrives.

While I don’t question any copyright violations (though the whole “audit” issue has even gotten me a bit concerned about that), there is still the question of patents. IANAL, etc., etc., but I’d find it truly amazing to think that someone could create a close of the Windows OS without violating at least *some* of Microsoft’s IP (in the form of patents).

I’d love to see the project succeed, etc., etc., but like almost any reasonable person who is not rabidly anti-Microsoft, I suspect it will be extremely difficult to create a Windows clone that does not violate any patents Microsoft holds.

I could not possibly imagine any company like Dell pre-installing ReactOS on their systems. I cannot imagine any big firms standardizing on ReactOS. The risk is just too great.

ReactOS will probably do okay as long as it flies under the radar and gets adopted by anti-Microsoft types who absolutely must run Windows (though that seems like an oxymoronic attitude to me), but even if it *does* get finished, I can’t imagine it would ever enjoy the popularity of, say, Linux.

In retrospect, it’s a good thing that software patents are a relatively recent thing. Imagine what the world would be like right now if AT&T had been able to patent everything associated with UNIX (okay,so the patents would have expired by now, but still…).

That’s clear, of course. There is a certain risk, and the attack is predictable on arrival.

Still, I guess, they don’t tend to invest many years of hard work just to get a legal suicide after all. There are many ways to cover themselves. I’m sure they have some lawyers to consult to, and the audit is also a part of covering.

Just as a note: Software patents are practically US-only. There is a big world outside that does not and probably will not accept patents for codes, algorhytms nor software methods.

As a summary, even though they surely will have some difficulties, they probably will have enough air to live on if they ever reach the release.

Not at all. If anything the problem is that hardware complexity is increasing, standards are only loosely followed by manufacturers and documentation is nearly impossible to find unless it’s an Intel component.

If that wasn’t bad enough, broken ACPI implementations are probably the cause of at least a quarter of everybodies problems alone.

i tried to replace the shell32.dll and explorer.exe from windows systems into reactos they wont load up. How would the clone be successfully made when u cant drop windows files and dll’s and expect it to run fine instead of script errors.